On March 11–12, the international forum "The Commonwealth of Libraries: Achievements and Prospects of the Long-Term Partnership" was held online, organized by the Russian State Library, the Library Assembly of Eurasia, the National Library of Belarus, the National Library of Uzbekistan named after Alisher Navoiy, East Kazakhstan Regional Universal Library named after Abai (Semey city).
The event was dedicated to the 30th anniversary of the founding of the Commonwealth of Independent States and aimed at strengthening partnerships in the field of information and cultural cooperation in the Eurasian space.
The forum began with an expert session "Best Practices 2020 and Objectives-2021", which was attended by the heads of the national libraries of Azerbaijan, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
Ms Alena Dalgopolava, First Deputy Director General – Director for User Services and Ideology of the National Library of Belarus and Mr Vadim Duda, Director General of the Russian State Library, Vice President of the Eurasian Library Assembly addressed the participants of the online conference with welcome speeches. They noted the importance of the topics outlined for discussion.
The session included three sections. Within each section, the heads and specialists of the national libraries of the Commonwealth countries spoke about the activities of their institutions in the context of a pandemic, presented best practices and projects, exchanged views and plans for the development of library cooperation between representatives of the CIS countries.
Mr Vadim Duda moderated the section "Libraries during the Pandemic" and posited that the pandemic brought not only problems, but also opened up new opportunities. This was also confirmed in the speeches of the heads of the national libraries of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan. In a fairly short time, libraries were forced to develop new forms of work with users, which included both the provision of open access to electronic resources and the organization of online services for users, as well as the implementation of virtual projects, activation of work in social networks, on official websites and YouTube channels... Most of the virtual projects were dedicated to significant dates of 2020, in particular, the 75th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War. The most popular of them was the project of the All-Russian State Library of Foreign Literature "Libraries as Witnesses of the Victory". All major libraries of the Commonwealth countries took part in the project.
Some initiatives were aimed at popularizing library collections. For example, the National Library of Kazakhstan has released a number of videos in which employees talk about the collection of rare books and manuscripts of the library. They also presented a project "Voices of Outstanding Personalities" aimed at demonstrating their rich collection of gramophone records. Summing up the section, the speakers noted that the work of libraries during the pandemic received positive feedback from users.
Among the projects aimed at promoting the culture of reading, the initiative of the Russian State Library "Light of Eurasia" presented within the framework of the section "Innovative and Project Development of Libraries" deserves a special mention. The idea of the project is to create a mobile application that gives citizens of CIS countries free access to the best works of the Russian literature. The app is aimed at young audiences, in particular, secondary school students.
The project "World War II in Archival Documents" presented by Mr Pavel Tereshchenko, Acting Director General of the Boris Yeltsin Presidential Library – a unique information resource covering a set of digitized archival documents, photo and film materials – was presented at the section. The moderator of the section, Ms Alena Dalgapolava noted that the presented project includes a large number of participants and is a good example of library cooperation.
Ms Bagdagul Samedova, director of the State Library of Turkmenistan, shared with her colleagues her experience of creating a single electronic library system in Turkmenistan.
The "Library Cooperation in the CIS" section discussed a number of international projects planned for implementation this year. Among them are the 14th International Conference "Central Asia: Information and Library Resources in Science, Education, Culture and Business," St. Petersburg International Cultural Forum, 37th IBBY World Congress in Moscow, as well as the annual scientific conference "St. Petersburg and Belarusian Culture" and others. In their speeches, Ms Umida Teshabayeva, Director of the National Library of Uzbekistan, and Ms Anzhela Lebedeva, Executive Director of the "Bringing up Readers" Association, expressed their special gratitude to the Interstate Fund for Humanitarian Cooperation of CIS member states for their willingness to support these events.
The heads of the national libraries of Armenia, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan stressed the importance of further cooperation between the Commonwealth countries in the humanitarian and cultural sphere, working on the formation of a common humanitarian space and finding new forms and mechanisms of cooperation for the library community.
The second day of the forum was devoted to the open discussion "Challenges 2020: Questions to the Library Community of the Commonwealth." During the meeting, representatives of the CIS countries libraries shared the problems and achievements in of libraries in the conditions of restrictive measures, discussed priorities for the near future. Ms Volga Skalaban, Head of the Interlibrary Loan and Document Delivery Department, presented the National Library of Belarus. In her report, Ms Skalaban stressed the development of virtual services of the National Library of Belarus during the pandemic.
Watch YouTube channel of the Russian State Library for more details.
Public Relations Department
